When the Supreme Court made a decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case in May 1954, on the surface, it was merely solving the problems of black students in five separate cases across the South and in Washington, D.C.

But when the Court ruled that segregation violated Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which asserts that "no state shall … deprive any person of life, liberty, or property … nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," it became "the beginning of the modern civil rights movement and a great transition time for this country historically," said Dave Foran, former director of public relations at Marquette.

Though progress has been made in the 50 years since the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Foran said, there is still more to do in terms of making all races more equal.

In the mid-1960s, Milwaukee was not as racially divided as cities in the South but still experienced a civil rights movement parallel to national circumstances. The city began to mobilize with the creation of a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1962, and in 1963 the Congress of Racial Equality was formed.

The Brown v. Board decision was "a testimonial to the wonderful nature of democracy," said John Givens, former vice president of the Milwaukee NAACP and former CORE chairman.

Prior to the decision, the Milwaukee Public Schools system favored white students. Black students were forced to use older books and attend class in poorer facilities than their white counterparts, Givens said.

Teachers' "expectation level of minority students especially was too low," he said, and when schools became overcrowded, minority students were transferred to other areas for lunch and recess.

The NAACP and CORE conducted protests and sit-ins to demonstrate their disapproval of MPS and in 1963, against a worker at the county courthouse accused of making disparaging comments to and about black people.

As the 1963 event suggests, the organizations were not only concerned with racial equality in the public school system but also with equality in housing and employment, Givens said.

"You couldn't even find a minority clerk in a downtown department store," he said.

Black public school teachers also were missing in action while Givens was attending school, he said.

Though MPS has changed since Brown v. Board, Givens is still "terribly discouraged" about a trend he has noticed within the system. In schools with mostly minority students, he said, MPS tends to "keep on experimenting" with new programs or organizational methods instead of keeping what works, putting these schools at a disadvantage.

At Marquette, Foran said, protests were no less active. Led by Students United for Racial Equality and its president, Greg Stanford, students used various methods to protest inequality and prejudice on campus.

In 1968, students "gathered en masse and blocked the door" of the former student union where an end-of-the-year faculty and staff dinner was being held. Another time a group of students locked itself in the Joan of Arc Chapel; firefighters eventually had to break down the door of the chapel to stop the protest.

As SURE's president his senior year, Stanford wrote letters to the university's then-president the Rev. John P. Raynor and, upon getting little recognition, organized a bread-and-tea fast during Lent as a protest. Though the event got Raynor's attention, Stanford said, "the president was very condescending at his meeting" with Stanford.

The protest fast commenced after the unproductive meeting and lasted until several students were arrested. Stanford and some other students also were reprimanded with suspensions.

Marquette did have black students enrolled, however, although "there were very, very, very few African-American students at Marquette back then," Foran said. "You're talking about 10 people … and the majority were on the basketball team."

Stanford remembered, as a freshman in the former College of Journalism in 1964, two other black students. Both female, the students were gone by Stanford's sophomore year.

While the university "has always had African-American students," most were from middle-class families and communities, Foran said.

College enrollment is now easier for students from low-income families who wish to attend Marquette. The Since its inception, the Educational Opportunity Program has brought about 2,700 students to Marquette from low-income families or whose parents didn't receive undergraduate degrees.

According to EOP Director Sande Robinson, 1,349 students — nearly 50 percent — have graduated to date.

Currently, "the university is working very hard to increase the minority enrollment," Robinson said in an e-mail interview. "Several efforts are underway, (and) I am hopeful that these efforts will result in increased numbers of minority students."

The 1960s were "a very gut-wrenching period" for the generation of young people experiencing it, Foran said. "The emotions in the country were very frayed."

"I think we have made progress in race relations," he said. "It's wrong for people to say we've made no progress."

However, "we still have a lot to do" in terms of continuing to work for racial equality.